


The Sword in the Stone

by Grac3



Series: Loki and the Doctor [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Thor (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 02:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10065926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grac3/pseuds/Grac3
Summary: Teenage Loki is avoiding warrior training by hiding out in the library, when the Doctor shows up and offers to show him the TARDIS library; little do they know that waiting for them among the books is a monster almost as old as the universe itself...





	1. The Spaghetti Incident?

Loki wasn't sure when the library became his favourite place in the palace, but it was probably around the time that he and Thor had started warrior training. He'd always loved books, of course; they were, after all, invaluable for his magical studies, but in the recent months and years, when he had been forced to combine his beloved sorcery studies with lessons on how to wield weapons and fight in battle, the long corridors of bookshelves had become to him almost a place of refuge from the horrors of the outside world.

Warrior training, for instance.

Loki closed the book that he had been perusing, and got up from his seat to replace it on the shelf. As he moved the tome, he caught sight of the small piece of parchment that he had laid on the table when he had arrived, that had been briefly hidden from his view when he had had the book on the table.

He had had the piece of parchment for decades, ever since he was a child. He had kept it with him as he grew, out of the imagination-fuelled childhood years and into the far more angsty teenage years in which he now found himself. He had studied the letters and numbers written on the parchment in great depth, scouring every source that he could find for some way of finding out what they were supposed to mean, but even after all this time, he still couldn't work out where the coordinates were supposed to indicate.

Yet he kept them all the same, for they were the only proof that he had that he had had a visitor in the middle of the night from a time traveller called the Doctor.

Loki could still recall, even to this day, the strange wheezing sound that the Doctor's blue box had made when it had disappeared, seemingly into thin air. As he returned to his seat, he could hear the sound so clearly, that he could almost imagine it was happening at that moment…

"Hello?"

The prince was almost caught unawares by the sudden shout that echoed around the room, seeming to originate from somewhere behind him.

He pushed himself up from his chair and peered around the edge of the bookshelf that he had had his back to, only to see the very man about whom he had just been thinking.

The big, blue box – the Doctor's big, blue box – was standing in the middle of the library, with said Time Lord hanging out of it.

But it wasn't the same version of the Time Lord that had visited Loki in the middle of the night all those years ago – even though he recognised this man's face from the pictures that the Doctor had shown him.

This was the man who wore the third face that the Doctor had shown him: the man with the long, wavy brown locks; his clothes were just as strange, even though they were not the same.

"Doctor?" Loki asked tentatively, stepping out from behind the bookshelf so that the Time Lord would be able to see him fully.

The Doctor – who had been looking off to his left as he half-leaned out of the big, blue box – turned towards Loki at the sound of his name, and his previously confused face lit up in a puppy-ish grin at the sight of the prince.

"Loki!" he greeted cheerfully, stepping out of the box and closing its door behind him. Loki wondered how the box could carry more than one person; it looked barely big enough even for the skinny Doctor that he had already met, let alone the many companions that the Time Lord travelled with.

Strange, he thought; the box had looked bigger when he had seen it last – though maybe it was purely a combination of the fact that he had been a lot smaller the last time that he had seen it, and it had been a lot further away, and so perspective must have been playing at least a small part.

"I thought I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere," the Doctor sighed, "but it's good to know I'm back on Earth."

Loki's brow creased; he knew that this Doctor was earlier in his personal timeline than the one who had visited him as a child, but it would seem that he already had knowledge of Loki's future.

The Doctor faltered at the sight of Loki's perplexed expression, realisation dawning on his features.

"Ah," he said, "we really _are_ meeting out of order, aren't we?"

"It would appear so," Loki agreed.

"Right," the Doctor nodded, waving a hand indistinctly, "forget I said anything. So…" the Doctor turned about himself, taking in their surroundings as he tried to ascertain where he had, in fact, landed. "Library on Asgard?" he ventured, looking back over at Loki for clarification, which the prince provided with a nod.

The Doctor nodded slowly, and resumed his scan of the library. The library was massive, stretching on for what seemed like forever, a sense that was only accentuated by the fact that the two of them were the only ones in sight.

"Where is everyone?" the Doctor asked.

"Warrior training," Loki answered, disgruntled.

The Doctor seemed to pick up on his negative attitude towards the activity.

"And as a prince of Asgard, are you not required to partake in such events?"

Loki sneered. "Not _all_ of the time," he grumbled. "My talents are better found in the use of magic and the wielding of a dagger than with the swinging of a sword or an axe."

The Doctor chuckled slightly. "Yes, I know," he murmured, with a quick wink of his eye. "Even so, would you not rather study in the presence of others? Use your magic on them instead of on books?"

"No," Loki all but growled, feeling his hands form into fists at his sides. "Not after…" he coughed awkwardly. "The spaghetti incident."

To his credit, the Doctor did not enquire as to what 'the spaghetti incident' was, and for that, Loki was extremely grateful; he had absolutely no desire to relive that particular episode.

"You know, the TARDIS has an extensive library," the Doctor offered, gesturing behind him to the big, blue box.

"TARDIS?" Loki questioned, rolling the unfamiliar word around his mouth.

The Doctor's face dropped. "Well, this _is_ early days. I assume, since you don't know what it's called, that you have never been inside?"

"I doubt that the two of us will fit inside."

The Doctor smirked and motioned for Loki to come over. Tentatively, the prince approached and followed the Doctor to the door of the big, blue box.

"TARDIS," the Doctor explained, looking up fondly at the box. "Stands for 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space'."

"Because it travels in time and space?" Loki asked. The Doctor's smile grew even further.

"That's part of it," the Time Lord accepted, before he placed a palm on the door of the box and pushed it open slightly. "The other part is in here."

The Doctor pushed the door open and disappeared inside, leaving Loki on his own in the library of Asgard. Feeling rather foolish standing out there on his own, the prince followed the Doctor through the door, and – upon seeing what lay beyond the entrance to the TARDIS – immediately retreated back to the library.

The inside of the box was _huge_ – not only with a massive room just on the other side, but a grand staircase leading up to what was probably countless other rooms.

By all definitions of the word, it should have been impossible, what Loki had just seen. He stepped sideways to walk around the box, seeing that it was exactly the same size as it had been when he had previously been standing outside of it. There was no trickery involved; the back of the box was a mere expanse of blue wood, much like the rest of the external panels of the time ship.

When he reached the door again – that the Doctor had left open, presumably for Loki to follow him inside – the prince stepped over the threshold once again, closing the door behind him as he gazed in wonder at the gigantic room in which he found himself.

The room was dark with stone making up most of the walls, and it stretched out either side of him to accommodate for large expanses of red carpet and furniture that appeared to be infinitely more comfortable than any of their Asgardian counterparts; they were covered in plush objects that Loki only knew from his brief lessons on Midgardian culture – cushions, he believed they were called.

In the centre of the room was a strange panel, with a large glass cylinder rising from its centre to the ceiling. The polygonal structure was covered in strange metal things, which appeared to be able to move; there were, for instance, several metal sticks protruding from the panel at an angle, which seemed to be able to be flicked so that they were facing a different angle – though what purpose they could possibly serve, Loki could only guess at.

It was beside this panel that the Doctor was standing, waiting patiently for the prince with a wide grin on his face.

"Go on; say it," the Doctor urged eagerly, and Loki knew instinctively the phrase to which the Doctor was referring.

"It is bigger on the inside."

"Yupp," the Doctor nodded. "Come; I'll show you the library."

The Doctor turned on his heel and raced for the stairs, leaving Loki having to jog to catch up with him. The Doctor led him up the stairs and down corridor after corridor, until they reached a large, wooden door, and the Doctor finally stopped.

"You ready?" the Doctor asked eagerly, wrapping his hand around the door handle. Loki nodded, and the Doctor pushed the door open.

The library on the TARDIS was at least the same size as the one on Asgard – if not bigger – which was incredibly impressive considering the few tables that Loki had seen in the first room of the TARDIS had also been piled high with books.

The bookshelves reached fifty, maybe sixty, feet into the air, and seemed to carry on for miles in all directions from the door. Loki couldn't conceive of the number of books that were held in this massive room, and he found himself eager to explore.

It was a desire that the Doctor seemed to pick up on, for he grinned and gestured to the room beyond with an encouraging, "Go on."

Loki wandered further into the room, almost as though he were in a trance, looking all around him for fear that he might miss something. Even his footsteps on the carpet seemed to echo around the cavernous space.

It was a good few minutes – walking at the slow pace that he was – before Loki reached the first bookshelf, and his eyes wandered hungrily along the spines of the books that were at his head height. He hadn't heard of any of them, but he supposed that if the Doctor travelled as far and wide as he had claimed to when he had last visited the prince, this room would contain books from all over the cosmos – even from planets and worlds and realms that only Heimdall would have any hope of seeing from Asgard.

The Doctor caught up with the prince as he began running his fingers over the books, feeling the leather and paper beneath his skin.

"What do you think?" the Doctor asked from beside him, as they continued to walk slowly down the corridor between two bookshelves, a massive grin plastered on his face.

"It's incredible," Loki breathed, looking upwards at the tomes that he couldn't hope to reach without a ladder, and – while he longed to see what exactly was up there, so far beyond his reach – no such object was visible to him anywhere.

As he lowered his gaze, however, his eye was caught by a picture – not unlike the pictures that the other Doctor had shown him when he was a child – that was sitting innocently in a frame a little further along the bookshelf at his head height. Loki headed towards it, and the smile melted off of the Doctor's face when the Time Lord realised what the prince had seen.

Thin fingers wrapped around the small, silver frame and lifted it off of the shelf. The picture was of a blonde woman with wide, blue eyes, her entire face lit up by the wide smile that she wore.

The Doctor came to a halt at Loki's side, making a strange move with his hand as though he meant to take the picture from the prince but then decided against it.

Loki looked from the picture to the Doctor once more, seeing the Time Lord's gaze transfixed by the picture as a unique mixture of joy and sadness rolled through his eyes.

It was a look that Loki had seen enough times to recognise it instantly.

"Who was she?" the prince asked softly, turning to the Doctor fully.

The Doctor reached out his hand to take the photo from the prince, and, as he spoke, he didn't look up from it once.

"When you can travel in time, everyone is both dead and alive at the same time. Schrodinger's universe," he chuckled sadly, finally tearing his gaze away from the picture to look up at Loki. The prince's brow was knitted in confusion, not understanding the reference. The Doctor waved it away before continuing.

"Her name was… is… Grace. I met her a long time ago."

A pause followed, which the prince ended.

"You love her." It wasn't a question.

"I love her," the Doctor agreed with a sigh. "But she didn't want to travel with me, so I had to leave her behind."

With an air of finality, the Doctor replaced the picture on the shelf and took a deep breath, before quickly snapping back from whatever place he'd gone to in his head and replacing the smile on his face. Loki recalled the Doctor that he had met when he had been a child doing much the same thing when he was reminded of the companions that he had lost over the years, and Loki still found the transition disturbing, but he wasn't afforded the time to ponder on it before they were off again, the Doctor racing down the aisle between the bookshelves and leaving Loki rushing to keep up.

They reached the end of the bookshelf in a matter of seconds, though the Doctor continued on, and Loki looked instinctively to his right to look down at the other bookshelves all neatly lined up in rows; but when he saw something standing in the empty space, he began to slow to a halt.

Standing between the bookshelves was a statue of a winged creature with its hands covering its face. Loki didn't know how the Doctor would have got it in there, nor for what purpose, but he found it fascinating all the same; truly, this place was one of wonders. Yet the Doctor had rushed off without him, and so Loki ignored the statue and continued on his way to catch up with the Time Lord.

They spent a good half an hour exploring only a single bookshelf in the library, looking at strange Midgardian religious texts and books that looked so familiar that Loki was sure that that they had come from the library in the palace.

"Well, uh…" the Doctor had coughed awkwardly, and Loki realised that they _had_ , in fact, come from the library in the palace.

"Actually, I have a fascinating book on Asgardian magic, if you wish to have a look…" the Doctor mentioned, heading off to the other side of the library, followed by an eager prince.

They went back the way that they had come, passing the aisle that held the statue…

Except the statue wasn't there.

Loki looked all around the space, trying to find the statue – he was _sure_ that this was where he had seen it – but it was nowhere to be found.

"Doctor!" Loki called, and the Time Lord stopped in his tracks and turned around to face the prince from where he stood, some fifty feet ahead of him.

"What is it?" he called back, raising his voice so that it travelled across the space between them as his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Your statue has gone missing."


	2. Use Your Illusion

The Doctor's expression suddenly became very serious as he marched up to the space between the two bookshelves in which Loki was standing.

"My what?" he all but barked, and the change in his demeanour was so swift that it surprised even Loki.

"Your statue," Loki repeated, pointing with his thumb in the general direction of where the statue had once stood. He didn't understand why the Doctor didn't seem to know what he was talking about.

The Doctor followed the direction that Loki was pointing with his head, before turning back to the prince.

"What did it look like?" the Doctor snapped, urgent.

"Uh… it had wings. It was tall. It looked like a maiden," Loki supplied the Doctor, his tone stained with perplexity.

A worried expression formed on the Doctor's face. "Did it have its hands over its face? Like this?" The Doctor lifted his hands up to his face, cupping them as though trying to catch water in his palms and then placing them over his face. He only held them there for a second, however, before lowering his hands so that he could see the prince's reaction.

"Yes," Loki answered, and the Doctor let out a deep sigh, looking all around him as though searching for something.

"This is not good," he muttered, almost to himself, as he ran his hand over his chin and backed away slightly. "This is not good. How did it get on here?"

An uneasy feeling was building up within the prince, and he longed to know what had the Doctor so riled.

"What is it?" he asked, taking a step closer to the Doctor.

The Doctor took a deep breath before moving forward to where Loki was standing and beginning to explain.

"It's called a Weeping Angel," the Time Lord began, his eyes darting all around him as he spoke. "When you look at the Angel, it turns to stone, but when you look away, it can move. Fast."

Fear fluttered within the prince, but Loki tried his hardest to not let it show on his face. "And when it catches you?"

"It sends you back in time."

Loki felt his fear dissipate in an instant. "How is that anything you have to worry about?" he chuckled. "You have a time ship. You can just go back to the place from which you were sent."

"Normally, I would be able to do that, yes," the Doctor agreed, "but I have no idea what would happen if you were sent back in time while you were _on_ the TARDIS. The interior of the TARDIS is in a different dimension; that's how it can be bigger on the inside. If you were sent back in time by a Weeping Angel while you were on the TARDIS, you'd be transported through time within a single dimension, but if you were sent back to a time when the TARDIS was no longer in the same place, where would you be then? In a vacuum, in a void, a place that once contained the dimension from inside the TARDIS but didn't anymore because the ship had moved."

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, once again looking all around for the Angel if he could see it. Loki followed his lead, now fully understanding how dire this situation was – well, for the most part; he still wasn't sure what the Doctor had meant by 'dimensions', or 'vacuums' or 'voids', but he would take the Time Lord's word for it:

Getting caught by a Weeping Angel was bad.

But the Angel was nowhere to be seen, and it was rather difficult to try and defend yourself against an enemy that you couldn't see and that you had no idea where it was.

"Where is it?" Loki asked the Doctor once he had turned his back to the Time Lord.

"It could be anywhere," the Doctor called back to him. "The library is so huge, it could be… anywhere."

Loki wandered in the opposite direction to the Doctor, checking every aisle for the Angel as he walked through the aisles between the bookshelves. Each blank space that he turned into seemed to have the potential to hold this strange and frightening creature, but each one was absolutely empty whenever he laid his eyes on it.

He lost the Doctor at some point through his meanderings; the Time Lord had gone off in the opposite direction, which made him feel more uneasy than it maybe should have done.

There had been similar exercises that he had undertaken during his warrior training: where they would be placed into a labyrinth of some sorts and have to deal with hidden enemies that could lurk around each and every corner. They were meant to improve a warrior's skills of awareness and teach then to pay attention to every aspect of their surroundings.

But those training exercises had only ever been merely that, and there was never any _real_ danger involved; now, Loki was faced with the same situation that was very real indeed, and the enemy hiding behind the bookshelves was one that he had never encountered before and knew next to nothing about.

Without the Doctor by his side, what was Loki supposed to do when he saw this Angel? He knew that he couldn't look away, but what if that was impractical?

The silent decision to split up now seemed very foolish indeed.

Nevertheless, the prince continued on, checking each and every aisle for the statue.

He jumped when he saw it.

The Angel had hidden itself in a more open space of the library – part of Loki's brain equated it with a clearing in a forest; except all of the trees in this forest were dead.

Four bookshelves created a large square of mostly empty space in which there was an incredibly large and heavy-looking crate next to a writing desk upon which was a large mirror and several writing implements – parchment, quills, bottles of ink and the like.

Yet there seemed to be less actual books in this part of the library than the rest of the gigantic room that Loki had seen; there were a few piles of books littered here and there, but the shelves themselves had all manner of strange things on them; everything, it would seem, but books: from pieces of technology that Loki couldn't hope to understand without the time and opportunity to properly study them, to a large sword with an impressive gold handle, to pictures of faces in frames similar to the one that he had seen of Grace elsewhere in the library – some of which he recognised, and some of which he didn't.

And, in the middle of it all, was the Angel.

The statue was no longer standing with its hands covering its face; its arms had been lowered to reveal a visage with blank eyes and a rather pretty maiden's face. Its wings were angled down towards the ground in a position that Loki couldn't conceive of being threatening, but the Doctor had explained the danger of this creature to him all too well, and he knew that – no matter how peaceful it appeared to be – this thing was incredibly dangerous.

"Doctor!" he called as far over his shoulder as he could without turning his head so much that he lost sight of the Angel, and using his magic to project his voice.

There was no immediate answer, though Loki was sure that the Time Lord had heard him all the same and was on his way…

But then the Angel moved.

One of its arms was suddenly outstretched towards the prince, and he took a step backwards, disbelieving. The Doctor had said that, as long as he was looking at it, it wouldn't be able to move; how, then, had it just moved?

"Doctor!" he called again, this time more desperately. "It's moving!"

No sooner had the words left the prince's mouth than the Angel moved again: its wings raised up into a position that looked as though it would be able to take flight at any second, and its mouth opened to reveal a set of menacing fangs. Although the Angel had moved no closer, Loki still took another step backwards.

"Hang on, I'm coming!" the Doctor called from somewhere behind Loki; the Time Lord still sounded incredibly far-off, but he appeared to be getting closer. "Don't blink! If you blink, it can move!"

Loki sighed exasperatedly, resisting the urge to roll his eyes and wishing that he had had that information a few seconds ago. He fought his instinct to blink as hard as he could, his eyes beginning to sting as he tried to listen out for the Doctor's approaching footsteps.

He took yet another step back from the Angel as his vision began to blur and tears began to form in his eyes. He wondered how far the Doctor had been when he'd called, when he could stand the pain in his eyes no longer, and he had to blink.

The Angel moved a few feet closer to him in his absence of sight, both hands reached up towards him and those fangs bared even further. The prince's heart was hammering in his chest as he begged the Doctor to hurry up – but no such pleading had left his lips before the Time Lord was at his side, clapping a hand on his shoulder to assure him of his presence.

"Look away, I can hold it for a while."

Loki breathed an internal sigh of relief as he turned away from the Angel, closing his eyes for a long blink that caused his eyes to water to repair themselves. The sting was a pleasurable kind of pain.

But his bliss was cut short when the Doctor let in a sharp hiss.

Loki's eyes snapped open to see that the Angel had moved just that little bit closer.

"I apologise," the Doctor breathed, as the two of them took a step back. "Keep an eye on the Angel so I can find a way to sort this out."

The Doctor sidestepped around the Angel, leaving Loki watching it by himself. The Time Lord cursed himself for not noticing that a Weeping Angel had stowed away on the TARDIS – he didn't even know when it had happened, let alone where he could have been when it had happened. The Angel could have been there for weeks – even months – and he would have had no idea.

That was, he supposed, one of the pitfalls of having an interdimensional, infinite time ship.

He had got almost no further than five feet from the prince when the Angel moved again. It was rapidly chasing Loki into a corner, and the Doctor couldn't let that happen.

"Have a break," he called over to the prince, fixing his eyes on the Angel from the side. From the angle that the Doctor was standing, the Angel could still see that it was being watched; once the Time Lord reached the back of the Angel, the monster wouldn't know when he was looking at it and when he wasn't, and the Doctor wouldn't be able to stop it from advancing.

While he took his turn staring at the Angel, looking at it for longer than his eyes were happy about, he saw Loki rub the balls of his palms into his eyes to recover from the continued staring.

The Doctor had only met Loki twice before, both times being in the prince's future, but he could tell that this Loki – this teenage Loki – was just as intelligent as he was later on in his life, and so, despite knowing what was to come for the prince so unaware of his destiny, the Time Lord found himself wanting to protect him for reasons other than the mere practicality of keeping the timelines intact.

He needed to find a way to get rid of this Angel before the Angel got rid of Loki.

He watched the prince recover out of the corner of his eye, feeling as though it wouldn't be long before he had to blink and set the Angel on the attack path again – and this time, the statue was close enough that one blink could be all it took to kill the second prince of Asgard.

Loki fixed his eyes on the Angel once more, determination written into all of his features as he took careful steps around his adversary to get just that little bit further away.

"You alright?" the Doctor called to him as he continued to move around into the free space behind the Angel. He was rapidly reaching the point where he would no longer be able to help the prince.

But Loki suddenly didn't look as though he needed any help.

A mischievous grin formed on his face – one that the Doctor remembered seeing on his future self – and all of a sudden, there were ten or more Lokis scattered around the room, the illusions all watching the Angel so the original could take breaks.

The Doctor let out an appreciative bark of laughter, inspiring the grin on the prince's face to grow until the Time Lord was sure that his cheeks must have been aching.

Safe in the knowledge that he could look around for something with which to defeat the Angel without having to worry about Loki, the Doctor turned on his heel – his frock coat swinging out around his hips – and his eyes fell on the mirror sitting innocently on the writing desk on the far side of the empty space.

A mirror.

Perfect.

A grin formed on the Doctor's lips as he moved towards the mirror. All around him, the illusions of the trickster were flittering around the Angel, confusing it. Even the Doctor wasn't sure which one was the real Loki. One of the versions skipped around the Angel, winking at the Doctor before disappearing and reappearing somewhere else.

The Angel, in its confusion, kept moving when it could, but it seemed to be travelling in a circle, not knowing which one of the Lokis to go for, nor when it was being watched by an actual person rather than just a figment of magical ability. The Doctor moved closer and closer to the mirror, his back turned to the Angel and the prince as the two of them danced.

He was nearly there, his fingers reaching out to the side of the mirror. All he would have to do would be to make the Angel look at itself, and then they could sort it out from there…

He was cut off by a terrifying scream.


	3. Appetite for Desctruction

Illusions flickered out of existence as the Doctor wheeled around on his heel to face the source of the noise.

His eyes fell upon the Angel just in time to see what it had done.

Somehow, the Angel must have figured out what was happening and that the illusions couldn't really see it, for it had found a rather unique way to end its irritation. Instead of going straight for Loki to send him back in time (or to send him to a void of non-existence) it had made its way over to the bookshelf that was now on the Doctor's right and retrieved a weapon for itself: a sword with a gold handle.

A sword that was now thrust through Loki's back and sticking out of his front.

The prince had his back to the Angel, his wide eyes unable to stop it from causing him any more damage. The colour was rapidly draining from his face as his blood coated the thick steel of the sword and dripped onto the carpet before him. His breaths were shallow, though they appeared to desire a greater depth; yet to grant them that would risk jostling the blade too much.

An intense fear gripped at the Doctor, both of his hearts clenching in his chest.

This wasn't the last time that Loki's tricks would get him into trouble.

Realising that the mirror plan that he had concocted – which would have required two pairs of hands to pull off successfully – would never work now, he quickly got to work on figuring something else out: preferably before the second prince of Asgard bled to death in the TARDIS library.

The Doctor searched his visual memory for something in that room that would be of use to him; there was a writing desk, there were books, there were quills and bottles of ink, there was a crate…

There was a crate.

A gloriously, deliciously heavy crate that – if applied with the right level of force and at _just_ the right weak spot – could break a statue.

"Stay awake, Loki," the Doctor instructed the prince, as tremors began to wrack the trickster's body. "I've got you."

Slowly, without looking away from the Angel, the Doctor stepped backwards and to the side, reaching down behind him until his fingers closed around the handle of the crate.

A breathy chuckle escaped the trickster's lips as the corner of his mouth twitched upwards in a pained smile. "I will certainly endeavour to, Doctor." His voice was laced with sarcasm, as though staying awake would be the easiest thing in the world for him at that moment in time, but the sentiment was betrayed by his lids slipping half-closed over his dulling green eyes.

That had been the first thing that the Doctor had noticed when he had seen the prince round the corner of the bookshelf in the library on Asgard: his eyes were green. The Doctor couldn't think of a single person that he had met over his long, long, life whose eyes had changed colour – except for Time Lords, of course, and that only happened when they regenerated.

He knew for certain that Loki was not a Time Lord who could regenerate in such a way – and he knew that he wasn't an Æsir either, though he was certain that the prince himself was ignorant of that fact at this point in his personal timeline – and, even if he was, the rest of his appearance was still the same, if only a little younger, than how he had looked the last two times that the Doctor had seen him.

Except for his eyes.

His eyes hadn't been green before.

The Doctor decided to file away that piece of information to ask of the prince later – in both of their timelines – for, at this point, it wasn't really the biggest issue that he had to deal with regards the so-called god of mischief and lies.

Letting out another calming breath, the Doctor slowly straightened himself up, bringing the case with him as he did so, and keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the Angel before him.

The case was certainly heavy enough to smash the stone Angel to pieces, but that also meant that it was almost too heavy for the Doctor to carry: at least, with one hand. He winced slightly as he reached around with his other hand to grip the handle with both of his hands. When the handle was secure in his grip, and his eyes began to sting, he cautiously moved forward towards the Angel, lifting the case as he did so.

As he brought the case up and over his head, he tried desperately not to obstruct his vision, but he failed for less than half a second.

Loki let out a sound that was half a pained moan and half a whimper as the Angel, in its temporary freedom, pushed the sword through his body just a few inches further. His breathing was ragged now, his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his head drooping slightly so that his hair fell at either side of his face.

"Sorry," the Doctor croaked, his voice strained with the effort of heaving the case into position. Loki offered no acknowledgement of the Time Lord's apology, which the Doctor found rather worrying, but he was also half-grateful for the lack of a distraction in such a delicate task.

When the case was in position and the Doctor was near enough, he all but threw it at the Angel, aiming for its head but hitting its shoulder. Nevertheless, the stone shattered into pieces on the floor of the library, and the Angel was dead.

But the problem wasn't over.

Now no longer held upright by the Angel, Loki collapsed to his knees, his features contorted in agony and a scream ripping from his throat as the sword shifted inside of him. The Doctor threw himself to his knees by the prince's side and grabbed the hilt of the sword to stop it from causing any more damage. Up-close, he could see that Loki's features were sunken and his eyes were hollow, having lost the brightness that they had held just a few minutes before.

"I don't die here," the prince gasped as he pitched forward slightly and a small bead of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. As the Doctor reached his free hand up to Loki's shoulder to hold him steady, the prince looked straight ahead of him, his wide eyes fixed on nothing in particular. "I don't die here."

"No, you don't," the Doctor agreed, possibilities of how to make that statement true running through his head.

"You've seen… my future," Loki continued, as though the only way that he could survive was to keep talking. "So I don't die here."

The Doctor tried not to think about the future that he knew the man – boy, really – before him would have, and instead focused on the present.

The Doctor realised that – short of fashioning bandages out of the paper of the many books with which the pair of them were surrounded – there was little that he could do for Loki right where they were, but as much as speed was of the essence – as Loki's eyes began to slip closed once more and the hand that was holding the prince up was steadily supporting more and more weight – he wasn't sure how he could get the trickster to anywhere that he might be able to get some help.

"Can you walk?" he asked, leaning around slightly so that he could better see the prince's face.

Loki dragged his eyelids open to fix the Doctor with a disdainful glare that the Doctor instantly gleaned the meaning of.

"Okay," he sighed, nodding ambiguously as Loki returned his gaze to the ground below.

The Doctor wracked his brains for something that he could do; he looked all around him as best he could from his current position on the floor, but he came up with nothing. He didn't think that he would ever have to admit that not having any medical supplies in the library could be considered a design flaw, but he was beginning to see the naivety of that assumption. After all, when one lived a life as dangerous as the Doctor's always seemed to have been ever since he had left Gallifrey behind all those years and decades and centuries ago, he should really have thought to keep some kind of medical equipment in every single room of the TARDIS.

Yet, as it was, all of the medical equipment was in the infirmary, and – even if Loki could walk, and, if he could, it would be at a monumentally slow pace – they could never hope to get there in time before the prince collapsed from blood loss.

The Doctor looked over at the photos in the frames that were sitting on the same bookshelf from which the Angel had retrieved the sword: all the smiling faces of his friends and companions from over the years since he had stolen the TARDIS and left Gallifrey.

How he wished he had some of them here now. They could bring the infirmary to them…

 _They could bring the infirmary to them_.

The idea snapped into the Doctor's head like so many of his ideas did: suddenly and with almost no warning – not that he was complaining.

As Loki leaned forward even further, resting his head on the Doctor's shoulder, the Doctor looked up to the ceiling and sent a telepathic message to his beloved ship.

He repeated his request over and over, desperation making him urgent until he saw that he was being answered.

A flash of light appeared by Loki's feet, dimming until it revealed the object that it had been used to transport: a jar of nanogenes, fluttering around like clusters of fireflies within the glass.

A grin formed on the Doctor's face as he let out a breathy, relieved laugh. He reached around Loki's thin frame to grab at the hilt of the sword with his other hand, so that he could use his first hand to grab the jar of nanogenes and bring them around.

"Loki?" he asked, unable to see the prince's face and therefore unable to see if he was still awake.

"Hmm?" the prince hummed; even the single sound was somehow slurred.

"I need to take the sword out," the Doctor informed him, swapping hands again once the jar of nanogenes was sitting by his side. "You ready?"

Loki sighed, as though he was trying to find the energy to reply. In the end, words failed him and he merely nodded.

The Doctor shifted his grip around the hilt of the sword and slowly began to remove it.

Loki let out a stunned gasp as the blade was slowly pulled out, one hand reaching up to grip tightly at the Doctor's lapel. He pressed his forehead painfully into the Doctor's shoulder, as the Doctor wrapped his free arm around him as best he could at the awkward angle.

Once the blade was out, the Doctor discarded it somewhere behind him, and violent tremors began to wrack the prince's body as blood began to pour from the wound and soak his green clothing.

"Careful now," the Doctor murmured, shifting Loki so that he was lying on his back with his legs stretched out in front of him. The prince's face was as white as a sheet as his breath came out in sharp, short, gasps; sweat was beginning to dot his brow and a distinctive stain was growing on his middle.

The Doctor reached for the jar of nanogenes, his grip slipping slightly as he tried to open them with his hands soaked in crimson, but, eventually, they were free; they fluttered to the wound on the trickster's torso as soon as they notice it and began to repair it.

The glow of the nanogenes covered his entire torso, fixing the damage that had been done throughout the entire wound – both inside and out. They were working slightly slower than they normally would, for they had yet to encounter a Jotunn before, and they needed time to work out exactly what was needed. Eventually, however, the nanogenes began to finish their task, knitting the skin back together and repairing the flesh. When they were done, they hopped back into the jar, ready for the Doctor to close the lid once more.

Once the nanogenes were safely put away, the colour began to return gradually to Loki's face. His eyes had regained their usual brightness, and were flickering with confusion beneath his fluttering eyelids.

As his breathing began to return to its normal pace, he reached up with his hand to where the wound had been, probing at the repaired skin with a sense of wonder. He turned his head to face the jar of nanogenes.

"What magic is that?" he breathed, astonished.

"Not magic," the Doctor informed the prince, "nanogenes. They repair wounds and other physical injuries."

"Incredible," the prince breathed, reaching out to the jar with inquisitive long fingers. The pads gently scraped against the outside of the jar before he turned away and sat up. He seemed to have been expecting pain, and was pleasantly surprised when none assaulted him. "Absolutely incredible."

A smile touched at the Doctor's lips; he so loved blowing minds.

"I think we should get you back to your own library."

Five minutes later – after Loki had used his magic to repair his torn clothing and the Doctor had washed the blood off of his hands – the Doctor walked Loki back to the library on Asgard, stopping just before he crossed the threshold of the TARDIS.

Loki stepped out of the strange, blue box and back into familiar territory. It was strange how everything still looked the same out here: even his books were still piled onto the table at which he had been sitting, as though no time had passed at all while he had been in the strange time ship – and, for all he knew about crossing wooden thresholds into other dimensions that were bigger than their containers would have outsiders believe – that could have been just what had happened.

He turned his back on all of the familiarity to face the Doctor once more; the Time Lord was leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe of the TARDIS with his arms crossed over his chest, and a smirk on his face.

"So? What did you think?" he asked eagerly.

"It is a wondrous place," Loki conceded, gesturing to the TARDIS with a nod of his head. "I hope to see more of it someday."

"Oh, you will," the Doctor assured him. "Until next time."

"Until next time," the prince agreed.

Loki turned away from the Doctor, going to return to his table as he heard the door of the TARDIS shut behind him. He was just about to sit down when his eyes fell on the piece of parchment that the older Doctor had given him all those years ago – the coordinates that he had been promised would one day save his life.

A sense of panic gripped at him as he grabbed the piece of parchment from the table and raced back towards the TARDIS.

"Doctor!" he shouted, and a few seconds later the door was wrenched open; the Doctor, wide-eyed with anxiety, peered out.

"What is it?"

Loki held the parchment out to him. "I was told to give you this when I saw you next."

The Doctor's brow furrowed as he took the parchment from the prince and studied the coordinates on them.

"Told by whom?" he asked, looking up from the paper.

"You," Loki answered, and a strange look crossed the Time Lord's face before he tucked it away in his pocket.

"I'll look after it," he promised, offering the prince a nod before he ducked back into the TARDIS.

Loki stepped back as the wheezing began, and the strange blue box disappeared once again.


End file.
